Friday, June 22, 2012

By FRANCES BEINECKE and TRIP VAN NOPPEN

Published: June 22, 2012

IT would be easy to conclude that the Rio+20 Earth Summit was a failure. That would be wrong.

Our planet is getting hotter and more crowded with every passing day.
Addressing its most serious problems is more urgent than ever.

So what did government negotiators do at the summit meeting in Brazil,
which concluded yesterday? They spent months negotiating a document that
ended up being watered down almost to the point of worthlessness
because of their lack of vision and their governments’ lack of
leadership.

But as presidents of two major environmental groups who attended the
Earth Summit, we disagree that Rio+20 was a failure.

Certainly, the document produced by negotiators was not even close to what it should be.

It did not deliver the commitments we need to reduce carbon pollution
and increase clean energy development. It did not do enough to address
shortages of food and water and other threats to a sustainable future
resulting from population growth, our governments’ woeful failure to
collectively address climate change and the rapacious abuse of our natural resources.

It did offer some bright spots — such as progress on protecting the high
seas from pollution, overfishing and acidification — although it left
other dire threats unaddressed. Chief among these was failing to
negotiate a treaty to protect ocean biodiversity. But what we must
remember is this: Rio+20 is not just about a document. Rio+20 is a
catalyst. It is the starting point for change, not the finish line. It
is a call to action for all of us who now realize that we can’t just
rely on government negotiators or verbose and hyper-compromised
documents to save our planet.

We must do it ourselves.

But here’s what else we witnessed at Rio+20:

We can do this ourselves.

We saw in the myriad Rio+20-related announcements from countries,
communities and companies around the globe that they were taking action
themselves — irrespective of any United Nations document. World
development banks agreed to invest in a cleaner transportation network,
for instance. Developing countries agreed to phase out incandescent
light bulbs. Australia, Mexico and other coastal countries committed to
protecting their irreplaceable seas.

We heard it from the young people who spoke at Rio+20 — sometimes
through tears and with cracking voices — about the fears they have for
the world we’re leaving for them.

Most of all, we recognized that the world’s people can assert their will and power to fix our problems.

The fact that 50,000 people came to Rio and that hundreds of thousands
more participated virtually through technologies like YouTube and
Twitter made that loud and clear. The incredible energy and the
enthusiasm they demonstrated is only a hint of what individuals can do.

What Rio+20 did was shine a spotlight on the environmental and
sustainable development issues we all know we must address. For at least
a few days, it forced us all to pause, take stock and think about the
legacy we’re leaving our children.

Now that the speeches are done and the negotiations are over, and the
world’s leaders are heading home, it’s time for the rest of us to take
action.

Individually, we must be efficient with the energy and the natural
resources we consume and be ever cognizant of what the decisions we make
today will mean for our children’s planet tomorrow.

Collectively, we must force our government leaders and our corporations
to do what is right for our planet and its resources. We must press them
to implement the commitments they made at Rio+20, and the commitments
they made in other international agreements as well. And we must hold
them accountable when they don’t. As we learned at Rio+20, government
negotiators and thick documents can’t save the planet. But as we also
learned, we can, and we must do it now.

Rio+20: Unsustainable outcome reached at UN Conference on Sustainable Development

22 June, 2012/Rio de Janeiro: Political leaders attending the Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development have failed to meet the pressing environmental and social challenges that the world faces today, according to Green Cross International President Alexander Likhotal.

“Rio+20 represented a unique possibility for the world, but what started as a zero draft outcome document has seemingly evolved into a zero result statement by today’s end of the conference.”

Green Cross International, which was founded by President Mikhail Gorbachev following the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio, was calling upon the leaders to update the view of economic development, and develop a roadmap for transformative action to put the global community onto a path towards truly sustainable development.

Green Cross Brazil President Celso Claro de Oliveira says: “Rio+20 has hidden its lack of results behind the fig leaf of the ‘green economy’, but what does green economy actually mean? It could be relevant if it provides a vision to reorient the global economy from the ever-growing marketization of Nature to the needs of the poorest - in a way to meet those needs within the environmental limits of Nature.”

“But for many political leaders, ‘green economy’ is merely a convenient term used to rekindle the same global economy with some environmental-friendly intentions or actions on the side,” Mr de Oliveira says.

“Greening of the economy is not a silver bullet. It should be just one part of what must be a multi-layered response. It is just a step in the direction of sustainability. But adequate and sufficient attention should be given to provision of security, poverty eradication and protection of Nature.”

However, concludes Mr. Likhotal, the overall Rio+20 event, which included strong civil society participation, is not a complete failure. “The Conference’s primary outcome is not about agreements that were reached, or rather not reached, the relative merits and demerits of which will be debated endlessly in the months ahead.

“The most important Rio outcome is the global realization that the balance of things on this planet has shifted irrevocably. Rio marks a shift in the way the world sees, understands and governs itself, something that was vividly shown by the parallel People's Summit of grassroots, civil society networks.”

Green Cross International (GCI) is an independent non-profit and nongovernmental organization working to address the inter-connected global challenges of security, poverty eradication and environmental degradation through a combination of advocacy and local projects. GCI is headquartered in Geneva and has a growing network of national organizations in over 30 countries.

Monday, June 18, 2012

Watch Severn Cullis-Suzuki's first speech as part of her on-the-ground involvement at Rio+20 last night with her closing remarks on climate change, the backsliding of Rio+20 and inter-generatioal action to our Green Cross Returns to Rio event at: http://bit.ly/Md7LvP <http://t.co/OWOg15tM>

Sunday, June 10, 2012

According to the Paris-based International Energy Agency... operating with a near-zero-impact environmental footprint would add
about 7 percent... to the typical cost of a well
in mainland USA...
more at: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/10/opinion/sunday/natural-gas-by-the-book.html

"My climate epiphany wasn't overnight, and it had nothing to do with Al Gore."
I'm going to tell you something that my Republican friends are loath
to admit out loud: climate change is real. I'm a moderate Republican,
fiscally conservative; a fan of small government, accountability,
self-empowerment and sound science. I am not a climate scientist. I'm a Penn State
meteorologist, and the weather maps I'm staring at are making me very
uncomfortable. No, you're not imagining it: we've clicked into a new and
almost foreign weather pattern. To complicate matters I'm in a small,
frustrated and endangered minority: a Republican deeply concerned about
the environmental sacrifices some are asking us to make to keep our
economy powered-up. It's ironic. The root of the word conservative is
"conserve".... more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-douglas/republican-climate-change_b_1374900.html

About Me

Luc is and adventurer, author, and member of the Explorers Club. Graduated from Centrale Paris, he is president of Sagax, a US-based investment and management advisory firm.
He has pursued a personal goal of traveling extensively across the globe, frequently with family; photographing and reporting from remote places to raise awareness for global causes. Luc is also Vice-President of Green Cross France et Territoires, the environmental NGO founded by Mikhail Gorbachev.